A French film lovers dream...or Take a trip to New York!

Jacques Becker (1906-1960) first worked as an assistant to Jean Renoir in the 1930's. This was considered Renoir's peak period.  During the Nazi occupation of France, Becker became a film director in his own right. He also joined the Comité de libération du cinéma français. The most well-known members are Jacques Becker, Pierre Blanchar, Louis Daquin, Jean Painlevé, and Jean-Paul Le Chanois.

From August 1-16, the newly remodeled Film Forum in New York City will be  featuring retrospective of his work. From Antoine and Antoinette to the prison escape Le Trou, this will surely be an event you won't want to miss. 

Review
“Jacques Becker was the most reflective filmmaker of his generation, and the most scrupulous. If criticism taught him nothing, it was because he had already assessed and reassessed all the problems in his own head. For a long time he was assistant-director to Jean Renoir, who liked to let him do cameos. In Boudu, Becker, young and thin, sits on a bench, puts his head in his hands, reflects, raises his arms toward heaven and declaims, ‘Poet, take thy lute and give me a kiss.’ In Grand Illusion, he is an English officer who crushes his watch in rage rather than have it confiscated by the Germans. This is Becker as revealed by Renoir, the great revealer: restless, anguished, elegant, lyrical, nervous, tormented.”
– François Truffaut

#becker #filmforum #filmfestival